Customer comments on this Youngstown Ohio Book
 Searching for Entitlement in the Backwoods.
Five self-indulgent p---- spend a weekend in the northen reaches of Canada. THERE IS NO STORY and there should be. The potential is here with good actors and an atmospheric location and cinematography. However, in spite of replaying certain scenes over to see if I missed something no solid story evolved and none of the frustratingly convoluted vignettes ever amounted to anything. This film fails to deliver. Worse still is the jumping into what should have been a powerful scene without any back story and no foreshadowing. For example: 1 The Sex Scene with Renee. Suddenly one of the five men is having sex with another guy's wife. But we have no idea if they even know one another let alone what lead up to the action. 2 The Through the Ice Scene. One character is found having fallen through the ice (was it suicide we don't know for sure, but we do know that the character was self destructive?) the solidly frozen lake, where hours before five men had played ice hockey in a cleared portion, is suddenly seen an ice melt even though it is late in the day presumably freezing hard. 3 The Tantalizing Flashback Scene(s) from a child's POV, an adult hunting and carrying a rifle -- the father perhaps - but we are never told what happened or why it is important and how it affected the family. Too many lose ends and five characters that despite a wide variety of circumstances are unable to enlist any enthusiasm or pity or even laughter.
 Captivating Film, Beautiful Scenery
Ice Men is the story of a group of friends who retreat to a cabin in the wilderness to catch up on all times. Surrounded by snow with apparantly nothing for miles around, there is a lot of mystery involved with this trip. First one friend, unexpectedly shows up. Apparantly, he has tenstion with another friend. If you are wondering why I'm not mentioning the cast members by name, it's because the character development is decent but they dont refer to the characters by name much. They hang out in the hot tub and drink too much. The men are straight for the most part and boast of girlfriends with nice rear ends and nice breasts but one of the friends finds himself very attracted to his male friend and thinks about touching his friend while he is passed out. His lust is near uncontrollable as he touches his sleeping friends private parts. When his sleeping friend awakes and is accepting of his advances things really heat up and after the hunting trip the next day it's clear things will never be the same for these friends again. There are a lot of secrets and jealousy will rear it's ugly head.
If you have been hearing a lot about the film Brokeback Mountain, you may want to check out Ice Men. This lower budge film has a similar storyline and you may enjoy it. Martin Cummins, David Hewlett, Brandy Ledford and Greg Spottiswood star in the film among others. It's a really captivating film and you will really want to watch it until the very end.
 "Nothing happened, we were drunk"
Things don't work out exactly as planned when a group of childhood friends meet for a weekend of drinking, revelry, and deer hunting in the wilds of Ontario. It's been along time since Vaughn (Martin Cummins) has got together with his buddies, and it's a reunion that has been long over due. But old friendships begin to fall prey to new tensions, as the tightly fuelled testosterone bond between these men begins to unravel.
Long-buried secrets give way to sexual tensions, and tempers begin to flare. When a knock on the cabin door signals the arrival of some surprising guests, the relaxing weekend retreat becomes a dire struggle to salvage what little is left of the group's fragile friendship. Gay Jon (Greg Spottiswood) - perhaps the happiest of the group - falls for Steve (James Thomas), a hunky fitness instructor, who although says he's straight, seems to want to sleep with guys for recreation.
Bryan (David Hewlett) a second rate songwriter and singer is Vaughn's best friend, but he's also friends with Vaughn's ex-wife Renee (Brandy Ledford). Vaughn, full of bitterness, hostility, and anger, is resentful that Bryan still sees Renee. Completing the circle is the dark, brooding Trevor, Vaughn's uninvited black sheep brother. Trevor has a gambling addiction and has come to the cabin to ask his brother for help, yet he resents the fact that his younger and more successful sibling inherited the cabin from their parents. The yuppie Vaughn however, sees his wayward brother as just another one of life's losers.
None of these men are particularly happy, and many of their issues remain unsolved. Steve immediately shuts down any further discussion of his night with Jon by telling him "nothing happened, we were drunk." And Trevor and Vaughn's troubled relationship remains just as enigmatic and fraught with problems by the film's end - their old family scores remaining unsettled.
Everyone seems to want to unload their insecurities and secrets but none of them are prepared to listen, when a drunk Bryan tries to tell Trevor about his infidelities, Trevor replies "I don't want your secrets." So rather than talk out their feelings, the guys pass the time by playing poker, getting drunk, and swapping jibes and gas jokes in the Jacuzzi; they even have a game of ice hockey, where the poor Jon gets the worst of it.
Ice Men is gritty, thought provoking, and disturbing, it's a beautifully acted film that not only exposes male vulnerability, but also explores the varying degrees of male sexual ambiguity. The interior lives of these macho men are gradually exposed and while the air outside is thick with snow - bitingly captured in brilliant camera work - the air inside is thick with tensions: broken hearts, sibling rivalry, childhood fears, financial desperation, and even sexual desire. Mike Leonard December 05.
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